CHAPTER IX
A BROKEN WING
FIELD’S bold plea for the flesh roused Ellen’s deepest emotional revolt. Her first impulse was to strangle the cool, smiling tempter.
On reflection, her philosophy of life forbade such violent attempts to force another human being to think as she thought. Absolute freedom for each individual human soul and body was the one principle on which she was building the structure of life and thought.
The man of Field’s daring, promiscuous impulses must of course be controlled in the new moral world in which the words husband, wife, parent, and child would become legally obsolete. Just how this could be done presented to her mind a problem. There must be a solution. There could be but one. He must be controlled by love. The magic glow of her passion for Manning warmed her heart with sudden tenderness. Such love was the solution of every problem of human life.
She rose with renewed courage to fight for her ideal and live or die by its standard.
She set herself resolutely to work. The first days of her separation from Manning passed swiftly. She literally buried herself in work. She was surprised at the strength and exhaustless vitality of her imagination under the new inspiration of love. She worked as never before--eight, ten, twelve and at last fourteen hours a day and stopped at midnight with stores of energy still untouched.
Manning would call before the end of the week. Of that she was sure. She felt no serious uneasiness until Saturday afternoon.
“A very wise young man!” she exclaimed.
She watched the hands of her clock slowly move to three. He had never failed to call on Saturday afternoon before three.
A sudden panic seized her. Could he toss her aside so easily as a vain and worthless experiment? It was preposterous. His love was the real thing. She felt this with unerring certainty. Her intuitions were too keen to make a mistake about a thing so vital to her happiness.
She seized the telephone to call the office and ask for him.
“I’ll not humiliate myself!” she groaned.
She slammed the telephone down with such violence the receiver fell off the hook.
And then the ridiculous side of her rage suddenly dawned. Why should a full-grown woman, who claimed equal rights with man, in all things on the earth above or beneath it, attempt to play the coy maiden who sits patiently at home and waits to be courted by her mate?
“Bah--such nonsense!” she cried.
She seized the telephone boldly and called Manning’s office.
“Mr. Manning is not in!” sighed the telephone girl.
“Not in?”
“Not in.”
“Where is he?”
“In Chicago, on business for the paper. He told me to tell any one who might call that he would be gone a month.”
“Thank you.”
The conceited young ass had expected her to call and she had! Served her right for being such a fool. Well, the lesson was needed and she had gotten it--straight between the eyes.
Lucy Sheldon would know all about it, of course. But she wouldn’t ask her. The little match-making minx of the old marriage régime had no doubt planned the whole thing and sent her handsome nephew away on the trip in order to bring her to her senses. She resented the assumption that she had parted with her senses.
“Fools,” she muttered, “I’ll show them two can play the game.”
A low muffled tapping on the wall stopped her angry arraignment of Manning and Lucy.
Field was calling again.
It was uncanny the way he would call at the moment when her mind could least resist his wit and insolence.
“Come out on the balcony, Fair Ladie, I’ve somewhat to say to thee!”
She walked to the window and found him climbing out.
He waved a jovial salute.
“I’m lonely, Fair Ladie!” he called.
“So am I, rude man!”
“May I come over?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll come over here, perchance?”
“Perchance--I will not.”
“Walk with me, then, through the woods on the Jersey hills--my car is in the shops.”
“All right; I’ll meet you downstairs.”
The stroll through the deep-wooded cliffs of the Palisades soothed her anger. The lines of the city’s tall buildings were half smothered in a haze that melted into clouds and made it seem unreal. There was no hurrying, rushing, maddening New York. It was only a dream. The woods and sky and water and rocks and birds were realities--all else myth. Even the man beside her, who persisted in his idiotic determination to carry her across the rough places, was a fiction.
Altogether Field seemed the most unreal thing in the universe to-day. She had accepted his invitation to test the strength of his appeal to her. Now that she was alone with him in the deep woods there was no appeal. His chatter about love and comradeship and high achievement fell on deaf ears. Her soul was a thousand miles away.
“That’s just it!” she breathed, “exactly a thousand miles away, in the smoky city by the lake!”
She stopped suddenly.
“It’s no use, Randy,” she said forlornly. “You bore me dreadfully to-day.”
“Bore you?” he repeated in surprise.
“Yes. Forgive my plain speech. But I’m in love.”
She sat down on a rock and looked up into his mocking eyes through a mist in her own.
“In love with a doggoned, stubborn country boy who insists on his own way and I won’t have it, that’s all--I won’t have it!”
Her hat had fallen from her hand, and her lips trembled. Field shook his head and touched her hair gently.
“Better let him have his way, child.”
“Never!”
“It’s best for you.”
“I’ll die first!”
“You may die for it anyhow. As well first as last.”
“I’m no weakling and you know it.”
“No, but you’re the marrying kind and don’t know it.”
“I’m nothing of the sort!”
“The only difference is you’re trying to invent a marriage chain warranted never to break.”
“Shut up!” she snapped.
Field threw up his hands in full surrender.
“We return then to the haunts of man where your grief may flow unchecked to the sea?”
“Forgive me, Randy!” she cried suddenly.
She shook the spell of her emotion from her, sprang to her feet and roamed the woods with a free careless joy that surprised her companion.
“By George, you amaze me!” he said at last.
“And why?”
“You’re a wonder,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’m more in love with you than ever.”
“It’s no use--forget it.”
“It may be no use, but we’ll not forget it.”
They reached the paved road along which automobiles were whizzing in both directions as a classy little roadster passed with a pretty girl alone at the wheel.
“Sensible girl!” Field sighed. “She owns and drives her own car, fancy free----”
“And roams the world seeking whom she may devour, no doubt.”
“Possibly.”
“She caught your eye, I noticed!” Ellen laughed.
“Never touched me!” he protested.
“You can’t help it, Randy, any more than you can stop your breathing by a moral resolution.”
They walked to the ferry in silence the greater part of the way. It wasn’t necessary for either to talk unless they wished.
Ellen had formed a sudden resolution that absorbed her. That car was a good idea. She had always longed for the freedom which such wings would give. With it she need not be incumbered with a love-making man. The woods and fields and long, winding roads would be hers. She had money enough now to own one. The fresh air would restore her poise and self-respect.
Early Monday morning she bought it and devoted the afternoons of the entire week to lessons in driving. She was an apt pupil. Her strength and cool brain soon gave her quick mastery of its every mood. By the end of the week she was sweeping over the hills and valleys of New Jersey with the ease of a veteran.
She took Field for a spin on the following Sunday. He was fascinated by her skill and sureness of touch.
“I’m glad I noticed that girl in the car,” he said musingly.
“Why?”
“Otherwise we wouldn’t own this one, would we?”
“We would. You flatter yourself unduly. I had made up my mind to buy the car before your slow eye had even caught the swish of the girl’s veil in the wind.”
“The times are out of joint!” Field sighed.
“What’s the matter with them?”
“The girls are getting too swift for my clumsy ways.”
Ellen laughed heartily.
Field touched her gloved hand.
“Keep your hand off my wheel!” she commanded sharply.
He dropped his hand like a naughty schoolboy who felt the teacher’s rule.
“Yes, Ma’am!” he sighed.
She permitted him to go to the garage and watch her give orders to the attendants. He walked home with her in an unusually thoughtful mood. They paused at the doorway downstairs. He looked at her earnestly for a moment.
“You’re not fooling me a little bit,” he began slowly, “with all this rush of new experiences and excitement outdoors. You’re just trying to hide the hurt inside. It’s not the way, my comrade. The way to forget a lover who is unworthy of your love is to accept the one who is. Come, be sensible. Keep your freedom and yet sweep the gamut of human passion and human emotion. You and I can form a true alliance of free comradeship. We have similar tastes and ideals. We work at the same divine art--the big creative art of letters. We live side by side. The secret of our love will be our own. Let’s marry to-night with the free ceremony of the new thought and the new world.”
She shook her head.
“It’s a waste of breath, Randy.”
“Why--why?” he pleaded.
“I--don’t--love--you----”
“I’ll teach you how----”
“No, my man of mind and muscle; you learn to love through your senses--woman only becomes sensuous when she loves. I want my own man now and I’m going to have him.”
Her lips suddenly closed in grim resolution. She pressed Field’s hand, nodded good-night and rapidly mounted to her apartment.
She was glad he had pressed his suit at that crucial moment. She had reached the depths of despair to-day. Never had she felt so keenly her loneliness and the humiliation of defeat as in the instant of parting at the close of the day of excitement. Nothing could have so cleared her mind of cobwebs as Field’s straight appeal to her senses.
Her course was clear as day. She would throw her silly pride to the winds, court her lover and make him her own! Why not, in heaven’s name, if she claimed equal rights with man, should she not choose her mate, pursue him openly and win him in a fair fight?
“I can do it and I will!” she resolved fiercely.
She called Lucy Sheldon and asked her for Manning’s address. Incidentally she learned much of deep interest about him.
“No, he didn’t run away at all, you silly goose,” her friend answered. “Brown sent him to Chicago to report a sensational trial. It’s the chance of his life. If he lands it, his salary will be doubled.”
“Hasn’t thought of me once?”
“I oughtn’t to tell you the truth, I suppose----”
“Please.”
“You don’t deserve to know it, but he’s been unutterably miserable. My letters have been his only comfort and I’ve had to tell him the truth about your scandalous flirtation with Field.”
“How dare you!”
“It’s the truth and you know it!”
“It’s false and you know it!”
Lucy laughed.
“I’m so glad to hear your indignant denial. Of course, I haven’t written him about it. I’ve just been sick over it myself.”
“Thanks for your lofty opinion of me.”
“What else could I think with your crazy ideas of freedom and your crazier ideas of marriage?”
“He has been unhappy?”
“Miserable.”
“I’m glad. I’ll write him now just what I think of him.”
“Do; he’ll be very happy if you tell him the truth.”
“You’re hopeless, Lucy.”
With a bang she hung up the receiver and hurried to her desk. Her letter to Manning was brief, but it made him foolishly happy.
In a room at a cheap hotel, buried in papers, his hair dishevelled, and his collar discarded, his shirt unbuttoned, he was working with tireless energy when the bell-boy pushed open his door. Furious at the interruption he glared at the intruder.
“What’ell, Bill!” he growled.
“Special delivery, sir,” was the drawling reply.
Manning leaped to his feet, his heart beating fiercely. He had felt it coming for the past twenty-four hours--a foolish buoyancy had braced him in his work. He had begun to think he had recovered from his wound. He seized the letter and saw her smooth, fine handwriting. A special delivery stamp on it, too! He read it at a glance.
DEAR LOVE-MAN:
Please hurry home. I can’t live without you.
Always yours,
ELLEN.
He kissed it, laughed and kissed it again.
“That’s what I call a real love letter!” he exclaimed rapturously.
He finished his work the following day and caught the Limited for New York. With every click of the swift flying wheels over the steel rails his heart beat a responsive love-note. She had surrendered her foolish whims. They would be married now and the real life of serious achievement begin.